'Endangered' Luna Moths

lday at iquest.net lday at iquest.net
Tue Sep 16 16:58:12 EDT 1997


>>An added point is that the moth may be doing fine in much of its range,
>>but if you're a 10-year-old kid who likes bugs, and luna has been
>>extirpated from the area where you live, it doesn't do you much good!
>>:-(  I would have killed to see a luna moth during my childhood in the
>>overdeveloped suburbs of Chicago.  I only saw them in field guides.
>>I could hardly believe it when, as an adult, I saw them by the dozen
>>in southern Illinois (300 miles from anywhere I could have ridden my bike
>>to as a child).  People need nature where they live.

>If there are no lunas within 300 miles of Chicago it would suggest to
>me that they have either suffered from _massive_ habitat loss, a
>devistating foreign disease or they simply don't live there because
>the conditions have never been right :-\

I'm sure there are some closer than 300 miles.  They live north of there,
in Wisconsin, and south of there, in southern IL, but my guess is that
the area around Chicago has been too devastated ecologically to find
them, or enough of them that most people could expect to see one.  (If 
somebody knows otherwise, please tell me!)  

My message
was that there are places once rich in leps that now are wastelands, and
I don't find this acceptable at all.  If there are to be naturalists 
in the future, doesn't it seem likely that those people will need to
see more interesting stuff than little brown moths when they are young?
(No disparagement of little brown moths intended...).  There ought to be
pieces of wildness that are not treated as museums, where kids can roam
around and make a mess and collect bugs without interference.  

Anyway.


Liz Day

LDAY at iquest.net 
Indianapolis, Indiana, central USA, 40 N latitude, zone 5.
Baffled owner of "Fred", the oldest living regal moth pupa,
who is not ready to hatch out just yet, thank you.




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